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Monday, November 16, 2015

Islam & Islamism

Islam is a religion, but Islamism
is a political movement, or, to be more precise, a spectrum of political ideas
based on particularistic interpretations of some of the founding principles of
Islam. In other words, Daesh is more a political phenomenon than a religious
one, and its ideology is a mixture of puritanical ahistorical, that is,
decontextualized, interpretations of Islam and Islamic history, coupled with a
rejection of the modern world. Why? Because it’s an alien world where the West
is superior and dominant on all levels, and its radically different values have
been imposed on the East through a string of colonialist ventures, coming as a shock
to an old and stale system of thought. Most academics studying the development
of political Islam have noted the major influence that anarchist and fascist writings
by a variety of Western figures have had on its development, and on modern
political culture in Muslim-majority countries in general. Daesh founders may
not familiar with this, or they might have chosen to believe that such sources
only influenced the development of secular political culture, but, in reality,
you can substitute any fascist or anarchist ideology for Islam in the basic
texts without having to engage in any intellectual gymnastics.

In short, Islamism or Political
Islam, with its ongoing affiliation with a variety of terrorist groups, either
through involvement in apologetics, or through more direct organizational
outreach, is frankly speaking a fascist movement, no different than those that
existed in Europe few decades, and which may rise again.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World